Revenge is a dish best served cold. The season did not get off on the right foot, and certainly not the way the Chicago Cubs pictured it.
Traveling halfway around the world to Tokyo for a two-game showcase event that began the 2025 Major League Baseball season, they lost both contests against the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
But with the second matchup between the two blueblood franchises taking place on the West Coast, the Cubs earned their sweet first taste of victory against the Dodgers with an emphatic 16-0 win on Saturday night.
The Cubs finished with 21 hits, including nine for extra bases.
“The boys came out swinging, and it was pretty cool to see,” said Chicago’s Carson Kelly, who left the park twice among his three hits and drove in three runs. “Kudos to our guys for working at-bats, really working counts, getting good pitches to drive and not missing them. We also ran the bases well and took our walks. … I think it’s just the mentality of this team that we’re going to fight to the end no matter what the score is.”
Michael Busch, once a top prospect in the Dodgers’ farm system, had four hits, including a homer and two doubles, and drove in three runs. The first baseman is batting a cool .308 (12-for-39) with three homers, six doubles and 11 RBIs in 10 career games against his former team.
Ian Happ had three hits and scored two runs, and Miguel Amaya replaced the injured Seiya Suzuki (right wrist pain) in the fifth inning and homered among his two hits and drove in three runs.
“You have to take a quick swing, not a big swing,” Kelly said, when asked how hard it is to homer off a 40-mph pitch. “You have to find the right timing of it.”
In fact, it was a historic result for Chicago.
According to the Marquee Sports Network broadcast, that was the largest margin of victory at Dodger Stadium in franchise history.
It did not appear that it was going to turn out that way early on.
Busch was able to put the Cubs on the board first with a solo home run in the top of the second inning, but with a bases loaded chance to extend the lead, the slugger was robbed of a golden opportunity to score a grand slam in the third inning.
Chicago’s offense was dormant and did not push a run across the plate until the sixth inning when Justin Turner singled home Busch, but it was the very next frame when the floodgates opened and expanded.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Cubs put up a crooked number scoring five runs that inning to take a commanding 7-0 lead, and in the top of the eighth when they tacked on two more, the Dodgers surrendered, waving the white flag by putting position player Miguel Rojas on the mound to close things out.
The offensive outburst supported a superb start by Cubs right-hander Ben Brown, who used only two pitches in his arsenal, a four-seam fastball that averaged 95.6 mph and a nasty knuckle-curve that averaged 86.9 mph, to shut out the Dodgers on five hits in six innings of work, striking out five and walking none.
Brown (2-1) on the season gave up five runs and seven hits in four innings of his previous start, a no-decision against the San Diego Padres.
“Just trying to do the exact opposite of last week,” Brown said.
“This past week was a grind working on things, mentally going through things, but I put in that effort, and it obviously showed tonight.
“I was able to slow the game down, slow the heart rate down, execute pitch by pitch and go back to where I was last year … when my stuff is there, we can get through lineups like that.”
The lineup took full advantage of that opportunity, proceeding to score five more in the top of the ninth to create the historic margin of victory.
While this was just one game out of the marathon 162, and Chicago is 1-3 against the reigning champions on the season, winning by this much had to feel good after starting their year 0-2 at the hands of the Dodgers.
The Cubs will go for the series victory on Sunday with first pitch set for 7 p.m. ET on Sunday Night Baseball.
